Call Centers

Today's volatile economy is pushing more companies to consider the merits of a virtual workplace for some or all of their employees. Often, however, the idea fails to go anywhere because neither managers nor their workers are sure how to get started. Also, attitudes among some old-school managers po...

Imagine this all-too-common scenario: A customer needs to add a new line to his cellphone plan. He's had a number of reception and phone issues, and he will stay with his current company only if offered a very good deal. However, the agent -- unaware of the prolonged dissatisfaction and insensitive ...

The last 10 years has brought sea changes to the customer service industry from both operations and technology standpoints. Organizations have moved away from traditional domestic live phone support toward new technologies and business models such as interactive voice response, intelligent scripting...

I am hearing from vendors that their on-premise CRM sales in the early part of this year are pretty good. No one has briefed me ahead of their earnings calls, but the results from late last year and Q1 seem to be pretty good. I should probably wait until the numbers for the last quarter come out fr...

Increasing contact center efficiency has always been a clear path to cutting costs, regardless of economic conditions. Increasing productivity and doing more with existing resources are now more important than ever, but cutting call center costs does not have to result in poorer customer service. Un...

Sarah Betesh's career in customer service began in box office call centers at venues such as the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia. She moved on to Tickets.com and Vertical Alliance, at one point becoming a call center manager. However, in spite of her success, Betesh left her call center care...

Not that long ago, the outsourcing of customer service to home-based agents was a small niche category, viewed as not quite on par with a bricks-and-mortar call center operation. For a number of reasons, that perception is changing -- starting with the lower costs involved and ending with the growin...

Driven by the housing market landslide and seizure of the global credit markets, economies the world over have slipped into retrenchment and recession. Many organizations are tightening capital and expense budgets, closing locations, shortening hours or reducing staff. Still others are tempted to re...

Right now, about 2 percent of the contact center infrastructure market uses Software as a Service, said inContact CEO Paul Jarman, citing research by Gartner. That statistic seems reasonable, given that the contact center infrastructure space has traditionally been dominated by on-premise players --...

Shrinking client pools, lack of access to credit and competition from offshore destinations are squeezing some business process outsourcing service providers in the United States. With declining revenues come cheaper valuations. This creates opportunities for other entrepreneurs seeking to expand th...